Burnout Paradise Comments by Kristan Reed

why cant we just race and crash? all this free roaming bollocks is boring, give me outrun from 86 anyday

Having played the retail version for last night, it looks like I'm a convert now. I was initially turned off by the open world thing, but apart from the difficulty of changing your car, it really works well.

Should be getting this game today through the post from GAME (PS3 version). I opted for that version over the 360 version after reading 1Up's review which implied it had screen tearing whereas the PS3 version didn't.

So are there any differences between both games?

I certainly thought both demos where pretty much identical to be honest in terms of graphics and feel, with the PS3 version having a more consistent 60 fps framerate (the 360 version felt like it was dropping frames more often). I have a DualShock 3 controller so rumble isn't a problem (the PS3 demo had it) and I can play music through my amp via my 360 and listen to the game's sound effects through the TV (with in-game music turned off) as a way round the lack of custom soundtracks on the PS3. Admittedly the DualShock 3's triggers aren't as good as the 360 controller's but after hours of playing both games the PS3 version felt fine to play, the controls perhaps felt a little tighter to me...?

hated the demo
completely put me off from buying it. Terrible interface, annoying voice over and the race stuff was just boring.

People just like to complain. Babies cry less than a lot of people on these forums.

The demo was good but light on races and modes. Reviews have been pretty good. Online was well done. Should be good.

It's odd, normally people moan at EA published games for not changing anything each year ;)

The reviews do all sound like the demo actually represented the game fairly well.

The no restart thing isnt a massive issue but more annoying is the need to look more at the radar than the road whilst racing. gay.

You can quit races - just come to a halt for a few seconds.

Man I wish you'd go back to single page reviews, less clicking through to find the rating.

@coach_mcguirk - actually, they said he was mild-mannered and almost likeable.

@DNM - So the score is all you care about? :/

No menus no sale.

No splitscreen roadrage no sale.

No crash zones no sale.

This is NOT burnout. It's not an evolution of the series, it's not burnout in a seamless world, it's a different game entirely.

RIP burnout, you were a good friend.

@f01re
"It's odd, normally people moan at EA published games for not changing anything each year ;)"

True, but there is changing game structure and completely removing features which make the game. For me Burnout is all about multiplayer madness sat on the couch with the person you are playing. Hotseat and split screen.

agree with f01re, EA can't win, it's either a boring rehash or its 'where did all the stuff i love go'

basically you just get one of two sets of raving critics posting their hate regardless of what you choose to do as a developer.

Criterion keep innovating, and it will please some with changes and annoy others. I hope they continue to innovate over and over in the games they make.

I've played a lot of this game, and I like it. When I want circuits, I load one of the older ones. Job done.

Oh and as for the radar, it's obvious you just have to learn the city, the radar is only useful as a general compass.

Put some time in and you'll start to settle into the city's pattern and leverage it to your advantage.

Heck, I love that i can just discover stuff, jump onto railroads and go to some mad places.

"So the score is all you care about? :/"

I'm more inclined to read a review if it's a single page, just personal preference is all.

@DrDamn

"For me Burnout is all about multiplayer madness sat on the couch with the person you are playing. Hotseat and split screen."

You can't read BR/DVD in two places at once. Spilt screen is impossible with BP due to it's free roaming nature.

agree with f01re, EA can't win, it's either a boring rehash or its 'where did all the stuff i love go'

That's a bit simplistic.

It's all very well adding new stuff - I love the idea of the freeroaming city, no load times etc, but the more possibly questionable and obstinate design decisions are worth commenting on: the lack of restarts, the lack of sat-nav, the effect that the design has on online races where you'll barely see a soul for the entire race.

I look forward to playing the game tonight and considering all this.

"True, but there is changing game structure and completely removing features which make the game. For me Burnout is all about multiplayer madness sat on the couch with the person you are playing. Hotseat and split screen."

You need a time machine set to 1998. Maybe a nice silver DeLorean.

"You need a time machine set to 1998. Maybe a nice silver DeLorean."

And you need to actually get some real life friends mate.

Couch + friends > sad lonely internet nerd.

Aren't you both

Open city A->B racing is a huge improvement. Disappointed that some people still want to be herded by invisible walls. Handling seemed lacking in the demo though. I've been spoiled by Midnight Club. Still, this is the first Burnout in a while that I've been interested in, purely because I'm tired of rubber banded AI cars on a linear route.

@f01re
"You can't read BR/DVD in two places at once. Spilt screen is impossible with BP due to it's free roaming nature."

I don't want split screen free roam, I want split screen point to point road rage, or multiplayer hotseat at the very least.

@Warzin
"You need a time machine set to 1998. Maybe a nice silver DeLorean."

Every sinlge racing game has the sort of features we are looking for or it gets a bit of a kicking for not including them (see Motorstorm for example). What we have here is a series which has removed these key features. It's not that we are saying it is a bad game necessarily, simply that it is no longer the same game. Change enough and it is no longer Burnout. At least to us where the mainstay of the game we played has been removed. It's a valid opinion, for us it's like removing guns from Halo and just leaving the vehicles and making it Halo Race!

If all you want is more of the same with a few extra features then fine. But Aliens the movie is nothing like Alien the first movie. You can dump a lot of the things that make something good and still make something better.

After all 360 owners have Burnout Revenge and now this. More choice.

"After all 360 owners have Burnout Revenge and now this. More choice."

Except revenge was (IMO) a steaming turd of a game. Traffic checking, vague takedown mechanics. All the visceral solidity of the previous game removed.

Anyway, me and my friends, sat on the couch together, will be wearing black armbands in remembrance of a great series, while we continue to enjoy the takedown multiplayer experience via the magic of backward compatibility.

Of course if they patched Paradise to include splitscreen point-to-point races I'd buy it in a heartbeat as the engine is one of the best I've seen. (oh, and Darren - there's no tearing whatsoever in the 360 version. Did a back-to-back comparison on Damn's PS3 and my 360 on the same TV. No difference at all.)

"Of course if they patched Paradise to include splitscreen point-to-point races"

Of course, the famous hardware patch of another BR laser ;)

You can't patch a free roaming streaming game into one that loads up a chunk of city (which is the only way split screen would be possible).

The raison d'etre of this game is a free roaming seamless environment with no menus/loading screens. It's not going to change...

@farticusmaximus - Thanks for letting us know the 360 version has no tearing. I wonder why 1Up mentioned it? I was doubtful anyway as I didn't see any in the two demos I played but switched my pre-order from 360 to PS3 version after reading the review just in case. Not bothered really as the PS3 version IMO looks a tad sharper and has a more consistent 60 fps framerate. The only things I lose are the Achievements (which I don't care for these days anyway) and the custom soundtracks (which I work around). Whichever version you opt for, you're getting pretty much the same game anyway; it's not like the PS3 version is much worst than the 360 one (for a change!!!).

Lack of multiplayer splitscreen is a big loss (what's to stop them letting you select an area of the map to play in like the demo area for example)? But anyone doubting the hilarity/awesomeness of Showtime (I was doubtful at first too) should watch the video over at Gamersyde! It's ace!

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_5820_en.html

f01re - "You can't patch a free roaming streaming game into one that loads up a chunk of city (which is the only way split screen would be possible)."

Of course you can. The streaming engine doesnt stream each milimeter of road at a time you know, it streams a chunk ahead of you. A point-to-point race doesnt need sideroads so it can cache less of the track and fit it in memory.

Anyway, the point is moot. It's very unlikely they would patch the game, even though it should be possible, so they lose out on sales.


"Not bothered really as the PS3 version IMO looks a tad sharper and has a more consistent 60 fps framerate."

Not wishing to drag this into an argument but for clarification: They are absolutely identical. They use the same assets, same resolution, and both are rock-solid 60fps.

If that was the case why are most sites saying the ps3 runs at a more consistent frame rate and has better textures.

Right now, I tired of playing Burnout 3. After Fuzion Frenzy and Guitar Hero it's the most requested game in my parties. I was getting tired of playing Burnout 3 over and over, so when I found out Burnout Paradise was released today, I thought to myself "Ei, I'll buy it, the single player is probably fun, and it's an update to the splitscreen/hotseat fun I have at parties".

No splitscreen? No fucking sale for me. Burnout 3 was fun for 3 or 4 days in SP... the real fun came from splitscreen, and I still play it to this day. Not really looking for another SP game (still working on PGR4, FFXII and VF5 right now).

Their design drive of not having any menus, is just an idea. When the design idea gets in the way of enjoyment (for example, having to anoying tasks like driving back to the start line for not having menus), it just ruins the fun a little bit. Rockstar found that out in GTA3, and implemented in both squels ways of restarting the missions faster (taxis and menus), and it was an immersive streaming world. No menus sound cool in paper, but after the "oh so pretty" initial reaction, we are left just wishing there was a menu there so we could just change the f***ing car already, or restart the damn race.

I bet the next Burnout will feature menus, or will make bigger use of their small side menu (why oh why couldn't they put the restart race option there, next to the online options??). Just morronic in my opinion to commit to an idea to the point it makes the experience less joyfull. And they could easly make splitscreen tracks if they were inclined (by limiting sections of the free roaming city, like you see in the demo).

PS- I love open games. The idea of this Burnout sounds good. Too bad that they took it too far, and fucked the game by removing menus. Want an example on how to implement proper exploration into a driving game? Look at Need for Speed Most Wanted. You get the fun of open endedness, but you also get the convinience of menus, and they were even able to get split screen into the game.

The game's good. I don't know exactly how good yet (only played it over my lunch break at home) but there's something very compulsive about it. Here's something rather cool. Hitting up on the d-pad turns on "road rules", which gives you targets for offline/online times to go down the whole of a particular road and offline/online crash (showtime) scores that started on each road (cycle through each, using up on the pad. It goes in the order of: offline time, online time, offline crash, online crash, road rules off).

This being the first couple of days of release worldwide, the targets are actually attainable. I legged it down a street in the mountains in the most basic car and managed to set the fastest time. Simply go to the very start of a road and drive down it and the timer will begin. If you don't drive from the start of the road (say you turn onto it midway down from another road), the timer won't begin.

So: every single street in the game has offline and online times/scores associated with it. This could become rather addictive.

You're meant to be able to compare these times with your friends to beat their records, though I didn't have time to take a look at that and work out how to display their details - only the top guy in the world's time is displayed by default. When you set a new record, you're informed on the main screen (and if you don't set the fastest time) and then displayed in a news ticker at the bottom a few seconds later. Presumably this ticker will update whenever anyone beats your time.

Haven't tried online yet, but it looks like it should be bloody good fun.

@Eighthours - Sounds great! Can't wait to get my internet back :(

I love Game - got this a day early, my mate's a little gutted about that!

Anyway, one question I have is... has anyone else pre-ordered it from Game? I did it to get the 'extra' car, got told i'd get a code to enter, but no code's come my way.

Just wondered if I'm in the same boat as others.

(And I was bothered about showtime, but it's great - imagine a crash junction that, in essence, you control. top class!)

No laps then? Having races be point-to-point ending at 1 of 8 centers is a letdown. Common, no laps in a racer which is all about the crazy roads ats actions you do on them? The regular races are just mini "continental rides", alot shorter and exicting i think.

I still prefer to be in a ceographied craziness, levels with laps made espicially for the over-the-top mayhem that Burnout made its name of. Having open-world means that this priority isn't the only one and possibly not the most important. They could have easily implement the crash signs\shortcuts in regular levels format. It would have made the races vary and with more options of how to drive.

And no, the Burnout fans wouldn't uproar if the new Burnout was of the same formula (minus trafic checking).

Crash mode would have worked well, don't see any reason to have that Showtime mode which i don't really like.
The new Marked Man mode is a nice concept. Only played one but it seems too easy and having the ability to fix the cars just beats the purpose and deminishes the tension of the cpu wrecking you.

The essentials are good though. Driving in the city, finding all the crazy spots but i really don't see why they had to strip all the other stuff.
The open-world however, does good for the Road Rage events. It's alot better and fun. Takedowning adds time to the clock so you can prelong the event alot, which is good because i love Road Rage. So you can have long Road Rages, really visiting paradise city so it adds alot to the mode. Also the possibility to fix the cars in this mode is nice and is a good use of that open world structure.

I need to play more, but alot of what made Burnout,Burnout have been dulled away and it's a shame.

I've just been playing the 360 version for around five hours tonight and I love it - although granted, I've only been a casual Burnout fan in the past, and only starting with Burnout ... ehh, the one before Revenge, a couple of years ago, so I don't have a whole lot of nostalgic memories to shatter :).

So far I really enjoy the open world concept, although particularly the point to point races have proven quite a handful as one wrong turn can often send you on a winding road back in the wrong direction (on the Western and middle part of the map in particular), making it very difficult to catch up again once you've got your car turned around. Learning at least the major roads and later also a lot of short cuts is definately required here.

Road Rage is blast though (spent the last couple of hours just on those) - obviously, and I like Marked Man as well. Stunt events have also been causing me a few headaches so far, but it definately helps a whole lot learning where the large ramps etc. are located. I haven't tried Showtime more than a few times so far, but I think this is the one area where I might feel like joining the nostalgic old-timers in their complaints :) - I think I'll miss the old crash junctions.

Overall this is definately not a purchase I'm going to regret - though I can see why the people who just want a rehash of Burnout 2/3/whatever with improved graphics are going to hate this :).

This is a real shame this is only burnout title i have no intension of buying
im going to miss it.

been playing this online doing the 2 player challenges with my brother, it really is a quality game, infact the only thing that stops it from being a 10 in my book is that it lacks halo3 like recording and replay, apart from that I'm completely converted after having reservations about the lack of retry button

It's clear to me now that the 'retry' everyone's missing represents a mindset that doesn't suit this game. I failed an event, on the way back I did some road rules, discovered some world, got a new paintjob, messed about a bit, did another challenge that was nearer then bombed back to it, and heavens above, driving back through this amazing city is hardly a chore, oh, someone's pinged me to go online, dpad dpad dpad, we're burning around together.

I played all the Burnouts, I just think with this one there's a sense of having to 'let go' of the old track based mindset. It's a Burnout sandbox with all the events built into it.

As someone who was non plussed by crash mode, it was ok but i hardly played it, i get that you could miss it.

Just had an email from a friend of mine at EA, who passed along this little bit of insider knowledge:

Burnout Paradise FCE

And who said developers never listen to their fans...

ooh, nice touch - just unlocked the burnout 2 coupe - see, they DO know the second one was best!

I've had the game since Tuesday and am currently sitting on 55 hours-ish of playtime and 98% complete. For all the things this game didn't get right it got so many more spot on.

I think a big big benefit is having enough friends to fill up a multiplayer game. I was in one today and it was lovely. 2 or 3 went off to explore how to get a billboard while another one was trying to get the Burnout x20 achievement. Me and someone else battled back and forth taking Road Rules times from each other and then when we fancied a change the host set up a few races. When the game fell apart I just carried on in single player taking more times from friends and finishing up showtime events on all the roads.

Personally I couldn't be happier that Criterion took the series in the direction it did, and I sincerely hope if they do another Burnout game it expands on the ideas in Paradise instead of shifting back to Takedown/Revenge.

dsmx - "If that was the case why are most sites saying the ps3 runs at a more consistent frame rate and has better textures."

@farticusmaximus - Well I'm only saying what I thought from my OWN experiences of the demo. IMO the PS3 version has the very slight edge graphically and in terms of framerate as I could feel the Xbox 360 demo dropping to 30 fps more often which has a small affect on the controls. Having played the final PS3 version for some 11 hours now, I haven't experienced any framerate drops so it looks like I made the right choice by buying that version. :P

@Darren

I'd like to know at what point it drops frames as it didnt drop a single frame, not even a slight hitch, for the hour or that so I played it. Do you run your Xbox in 1080p?

I'm with Miths on this one (a few posts back). I'm a kind of casual Burnout enjoyer (as opposed to fan) and I've really enjoyed the 3 hours on Paradise so far. I think the open world system works really well and there's just so much to do.
I loved Crash mode in the previous games and Showtime just doesn do it for me like Crash used to. There's something about perfecting your launch off a ramp to specifically hit the multipliers and buses and simply praying you'd avoid the heart-breakers; it just plugged into what gaming is about.
And I've only just realised reading these comments that it's single player only ! D'oh ! Still, those grumbles aside, I think Criterion should be applauded for making the tough decision to break away from what would have been a very easy money-spinner; simply re-hashing the old formula with a shiny new front-end. Just think how much we'd have complained at the lack of imagination.

So, in summary: 8/10. Ta.

EA have turned a brilliant series into a load of crap I think paradise its a bit too much like the boring old NFS and its far to slow.

Sounds a bit like Test Drive Unlimited, but less... boring? I'll have to pick this up on rental next week.

Now that the game is based on a roaming/ open city model, are the driving physics more natural than previous burnouts, or is it the same "blast forward at ungodly speed" formula? Or another way of putting this: is there any point whatsoever in trying to use a racing wheel with this game?

RIP Burnout.

Damn you EA for making one of my favorite racing games a nonsense like this.

I hope there are descent developer somewhere that would fill up the gap in my heart and make Burnout 2 in HD.

It's much more like NFS Most Wanted than TDU. Rental is definitely the way to go though.

I've got to an 'A' license and spent quite a few hours on it, but it's getting boring now. Because everywhere is open from the off there's little incentive.

In addition learning the city isn't as rewarding or intuative as I thought it might be... can't say exactly why, perhaps because the minimap is next to useless at speed.

Just picked this up. Really enjoying it. Yes. Definitely worth £20 anyway.